The Ritual

by Adam L.G. Nevill

They never found the river, and the mouth-watering dream of Swedish girls and hot beans with sausage dimmed like the September light, and then vanished along with any expectation of finding the end of the forest that day.

he said, ‘It’s going to put us up there, in the trees.’

Around the corner of the staircase he’d then staggered into the attic, and opened his mouth to call for help. But no sound had come out of his mouth. There was no air inside him, like he was winded.

He’d tried not to look up, because something was in there with him.

And then he could smell it. Dung in straw, cattle sweat and sulphur stink; it made his eyes water.

You could never come back from an event like this. Nothing would ever be the same again. He knew his friendship was over with all three of them.

He would do this for these men he had once loved like brothers, even if they weren’t his friends any more.

‘The last thing this place feels is holy.’

‘We only went camping because you’re so skint. Me and Phillers and H wanted to go somewhere warm, but you couldn’t afford it. We were thinking Egypt for some Red Sea diving. So this is what happens when you compromise for a free spirit, who lives by his own rules.

It was a mixture of a bovine cough and a jackal’s bark, but one so deep and powerful it suggested a chest more expansive and a mouth wider than either of those comparisons. Bestial. Ferocious. To be avoided.

Then the air is filled with screams, but not the cold air here, Luke realizes. But in the air of the world outside his nightmare something even worse was now occurring.

A short expulsion of noise from an agony so great it made the listeners feel sick. It was followed by a childlike whimper, and nothing more.

And then they found Hutch hanging from the trees in the same way they found the animal two days before.

He’d lived ten years of his life in London amongst people whose entire vocal output was a public relations exercise, who spun the truth of their existences into scenarios designed to provoke envy.

They’re gone. The old people I saw in my dream. Who … fed it. But it is still here.’

At least you and Hutch had a go at something else. That’s got to count for something? And nothing is really safe. Is it? None of us knew what life would throw at us. Everyone is fucked up, Luke. Damaged. We’re all messed up, underneath. Doesn’t matter what kind of house you live in.’

And from the foot of the hill, no more than twenty metres below them, as if rising to a new challenge, a long and terrible sound grew from a hidden mouth and made the hill, and every square foot of land for miles around, tremble from its bellow.

Out here you were butchered and then tossed into a sodden crypt. Piled up with the mottled bones of strangers and dead cattle. They were my mates.

And why they produced such music in the social utopia of Scandinavia puzzled him. Perhaps it was a protest to being the most spoiled people in Europe; an act of rebellion against having everything.

Luke lay back and closed his eyes on a grey world that did not seem to want him in it any more.

They were a couple of misfits who think you’re some kind of messiah. Hardly candidates of the highest calibre for the revolution. What a sad and pointless tale it ultimately is.’

He lay still, in silence, on the reeking sheepskins and waited for the light to completely fade out, for the sky to darken. To finally get this over with.

I'm waiting too...

He wanted to laugh, but also acknowledged that he had probably lost his mind. At last. About fucking time. What good had it been anyway?

it wanted to be remembered, and honoured. As all Gods do.

If only we could all stand up. All of us who have died unjustly for the Gods of the insane. There would be so many of us.

Moder was coming home now.